Deadpool never gets to be too much. The film quickly goes into flashback–narrated by lead Ryan Reynolds–but not before going through an elaborate, effects and humor filled action sequence. Maybe even two. But I think one.

It takes Deadpool over an hour to get the viewer caught up on Reynolds’s origins as a superpowered, red spandex wearing former mercenary on a mission to fix himself. Literally. Villain Ed Skrein has turned Reynolds into the super-antihero and only he can turn him back. Reynolds’s transformation severely scars him, which is why he can’t go back to girlfriend Morena Baccarin, instead leaving her available to become a damsel in distress.

And screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick actually do make an effort to give Baccarin more depth, but it doesn’t work out. She’s amiable but without enough personality to make an impression. It also doesn’t help director Miller doesn’t care. He cares about making all the gimmicks palpable, then promptly ignores them for the rest of the film. Because Deadpool doesn’t build in any intensity. It’s always exactly the same. The special effects are always great, Reynolds is always sort of likable, but the movie doesn’t move. It plods along with bursts of effects at predictable intervals.

Of course, flashbacks don’t equal character development. In fact, they sort of kill it and spending more than half your runtime on setting up what amounts to a lifelessly directed superhero action finale. It’s a long 108 minutes, especially since no one ever pays off. There just isn’t any payoff in the script–Deadpool has American Pie-style humor in a graphically violent comic book movie. But it’s more. It’s Miller and it’s the cast.

Everyone’s a caricature, which might work if Reynolds wasn’t, but he’s a cartoon character who wants to be a caricature. The cast lacks any personality–Skein is shaved head British villain, Gina Carano is his super-strong sidekick who doesn’t talk, T.J. Miller is an exceptionally unfunny sidekick for Reynolds. None of them are likable. Skein and Carano’s villains are empty characterization. Director Miller apparently told actor Miller to be a lifeless tool.

There’s some life once Leslie Uggams shows up as Reynolds’s old blind lady roommate. Those scenes are at least played for fun. There’s no fun in the rest of it after a point. Some funny superhero movie jokes but nothing fun. Not even Stefan Kapičić’s obnoxiously by the book Russian X-Man (Kapičić just does the voice, the excellent CGI occupies frame), is ever any fun. Because Reese and Wernick beat the same notes on the same drum. Over and over again.

Deadpool is exactly the same at the end as it is in the beginning, as it is in the middle, just without Miller making any effort to do anything with the project. He shows off a bunch of toys, then puts them away to turn a generic finish.

Also, just like flashbacks don’t mean character development, violence doesn’t mean dangerous. Reynolds is in no life threatening danger throughout the present action. He’s more under threat of inconvenience, which the film uses to some success (and failure) with limb regeneration. But Miller (the director) doesn’t acknowledge the particulars in plotting out fight scenes. Skrein and Reynolds’s face off, for instance, is rote.

All Deadpool needs is a little momentum, a little sense of urgency. Miller doesn’t create any, Reynolds doesn’t either, and the script is a champion lollygagger. Instead, Deadpool just moves amiably along, walking a slow march on a broad path, trying not to even make eye contact with edgier possibilities.

★

CREDITS

Directed by Tim Miller; screenplay by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, based on the Marvel Comics character created by Fabian Nicieza and Rob Liefeld; director of photography, Ken Seng; edited by Julian Clarke; music by Junkie XL; production designer, Sean Haworth; produced by Simon Kinberg, Ryan Reynolds, and Lauren Shuler Donner; released by 20th Century Fox.

It would go a little far to say Scott’s reinvented the disaster genre with Unstoppable, but he’s certainly reinvigorated it. He borrows from the traditional standards (the Irwin Allen is heaviest in the first act, when setting up innocent people–children no less–in peril), then a little from the revisionist standards (the Die Hard approach), while maintaining a brisk pace. The present action isn’t quite real time, but close to it.

Scott maintains his formula (solid composition if you can catch it–he cuts away from his shots every one and a half seconds) and it works out. He and cinematographer Ben Seresin construct a thoroughly acceptable action picture. But–even though Mark Bomback’s script waxes melodramatic for the protagonists’ ground situations–the movie really succeeds because of Denzel Washington.

Why Washington, maybe the most assured movie star of his generation, wastes his time with Scott films is inexplicable. His performance here is outstanding, whether it’s chewing or hopping from train car to train car. It’s so good, in fact, it hurts Chris Pine.

Pine does an okay job. Bomback’s script gives him a stupid backstory and continues it through the entire film instead of just setting him up and leaving him alone. Worst is when Jessy Schramm, as his wife, shows up. She probably has three lines and she’s absolutely godawful.

Great supporting turns from Rosario Dawson and Kevin Corrigan and an excellent score from Harry Gregson-Williams round it out.

It’s easily one of Scott’s strongest films.

★★

CREDITS

Directed by Tony Scott; written by Mark Bomback; director of photography, Ben Seresin; edited by Chris Lebenzon and Robert Duffy; music by Harry Gregson-Williams; production designer, Chris Seagers; produced by Julie Yorn, Scott, Mimi Rogers, Eric McLeod and Alex Young; released by 20th Century Fox.